Borges' Labyrinths

It was our second meeting of our Confederacy of Dunces Book Club. We all seemed to agree that Borges is extremely unique and, at times, breathtaking.  If one word describes his work, it would be "succinct".  Some take it as far as saying he never wrote a novel, just plot outlines.  But what stories! Terse, pared to the bone, free of anything extraneous, yet charged with wry and detached humour, Borges takes us to amazing and often horrific universes in which literary, mathematical, scientific and philosophical riddles are made real. Here are stories exploring the nature of existence and the meaning of infinity.  I love such powerful literary works that can bridge the gap between philosophy and narrative.

During the evening it wasn't always a Borges love-fest.  Some went as far as to label it Jabberwocky, fairy tales for adults and mere abstracts for metaphysical tomes.   I remember reading somewhere: "speculative philosophy died and found its way into these stories".  ; each very Romantic and "magically realistic". These are fairy tales for adults.  An amazon reviewer said:

"Borges contracted the vices of two continents without assimilating any of the individual virtues possessed thereby. He was a journalist who wrote fiction with the corresponding appetite for the fantastic, and the scavanger's instinct for 'news' corresponding to the personal qualities demanded and cultivated by the profession."

But they did go on to say:

"That said, Borges was by far the finest Theosophical thinker of the last century . . . well learned and it shows . . . some power of imagination required to deliver all those clever little asides only those in command of the literature of six nations can fathom . . . a man of the people and ivory tower intellectual as well . . . none can compare . . ."

In 'Kafka and his precursors', Borges lampoons the very idea of authorship, yet his own influences are clear. He is as journalistic and rational as his heroes, Wells and Poe, and has a sharp, ironic style every bit as focused as Kafka, but if anything even harder hitting. The themes sound lofty, and they are -- but the execution is much more accessible than one would think, and it often has the beauty of the abbreviated, Japanese poetic form called the Haiku: I think of phrases such as "some birds, a horse, saved the ruins of an amphitheatre".

Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita

{Jessica and her masterpiece}

Bulgakov's classic was the first book of our club: A Confederacy of Dunces. It's a quarterly book club for the ambitious and egotistical reader. Amongst the onslaught of tempting reading material, the follow titles emerge as likely subjects: The Magus by John Fowles, Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov, Labyrinths by Jorge Louis Borges, Goethe's Faust, Maupassant and Solzhenitsyn.


With a view to directing and stimulating the evening's discourse, my sister put together some questions that we discussed and added to the great success of the evening.

1. Do you think the book is written as allegory and political satire, rather than just magic realism? Do you think that Bulgakov motived by something beyond the desire to create an entertaining novel? Do you think the use of magic realism by Bulgakov was a reaction against the hard realism Stalin demanded in his condemnation of artists?

2. If so, what was the primary message that Bulgakov was trying to communicate with this novel?

3. “The havoc wreaked by this group targets the literary elite, along with its trade union, MASSOLIT (a Soviet-style abbreviation for "Moscow Society of Literature", but possibly interpretable as "Literature for the Masses"; one translation of the book also mentions that this could be a play on words in Russian, which could be translated into English as something like "LOTTALIT"), its privileged HQ-restaurant Griboyedov's House, corrupt social-climbers and their women (wives and mistresses alike) – bureaucrats and profiteers – and, more generally, sceptical unbelievers in the human spirit.” - (wikipedia). Why did Bulgakov select these groups as Woland’s targets?

4. Additionally, the ‘greedy’ bourgeoisie are presented rather poorly when they scramble for clothes, stockings, perfume and shoes in the Variety Theatre. What social comment do you think Bulgakov was making in that scene in the context of the novel?

5. From the first scene on Patriarch’s Ponds, there is an entertaining pattern of characters who either are atheists or are disposed to explain away the phenomena with which they are presented as scientifically explicable, particularly figures in authority. Few characters recognise the true source of the macabre events or are prepared to accept the “reality”. Why do you think Bulgakov does this? Is it for entertainment, to cement the realism within the magical realism style, or is it a comment on something else?

6. Why do you think Bulgakov was so interested in Yeshua Ha-Nozri and Pontius Pilate, in using them as a central source of drama in the novel?

7. “The Master and Margarita leave and as a reward for not having lost their faith they are granted "peace" but are denied "light", i.e. salvation.” – (wikipedia). What does this gesture mean, if anything? Why does Margarita become a witch? How does that place her in reference to the themes of the novel? What is the significance of her deal with the devil? Do you think that the master and Margarita represent something, and if so, what?

8. Do you think Bulgakov is an atheist?

9. Do you think Bulgakov agrees with the version of history he puts forward with regard to Yeshua Ha-Nozri and Pontius Pilate? Or was he presenting this version for some ulterior purpose?

10. "The Master is so unacknowledged that he feels more at home in a lunatic asylum than in society, where he is subject to the whims of the actual legislators of the world, such as the bureaucrats of Massolit and their political masters" - (wikipedia). Is Bulgakov saying that the master and margarita are the only 'sane' people in Moscow?

{Laura and Clive}

{Ben et moi}

{Laura and Ebony}

{Jessica's masterpiece Behemoth the Cat cake}